A ‘Dark Science’ in search of a more Rational Approach

The Sciences Po Law School is pleased to invite you to a discussion organised by RECITALS (Cercle des Humanités Politiques) with Jacco Bomhoff, Associate Professor of Law (>LSE Law School), on his forthcoming paper: "A ‘Dark Science’ in search of a more Rational Approach".

Abstract: This article situates the ways in which law (mid 20th century) dealt with legal clashes (the "conflicts of laws") in the broader contexts of understandings of ‘conflict’ and of ‘rationality’ in the social and behavioural sciences and in legal and political theory of the period. Under the common banner of a search for a ‘more rational’ approach to choice of law, US conflict-of-laws scholars of the 1950s and 1960s developed two radically different visions for dealing with legal conflict. Mainstream scholars drew on these ideas in developing a view of legal technique as an apparatus that could be fine-tuned towards solving all manner of multi-jurisdictional conflicts by way of the optimization of all interests in play. In their approaches, however, conflict was depoliticized, and the project of doctrinal rationalization conflated with –often unacknowledged – substantive values of economic liberalization and internationalization.The article brings these substantive effects of conflicts doctrine to light, principally by way of a contrast with the dissenting views of Brainerd Currie, revisiting his famous 1958 run of articles through the lens of the search for rationality and their connections to contemporary methodological innovations in the human sciences. The article aims to contribute to our understanding of the history of the ideals of rationality and legitimacy in legal thought, as well as of the genealogy of post-war choice of law.

Inscription and access to the full paper via the website RECITALS seminar.